#66: Chef's Garden - A Veritable Wonderland of Vegetables
Recently, we were introduced to a produce farm just outside Cleveland, Ohio, and quickly learned that this longstanding family-run business is as passionate about growing vegetables as we are about eating them. So we flew to the Chef's Garden farm, so we could film this magical visit and let you experience it firsthand with us.
The Chef's Garden has been delivering specialty products with optimum shelf life, quality, flavor, and nutrition direct from the farm to the world's most discriminating chefs for over 30 years.
This vast playground of vegetables is also host to the Culinary Vegetable Institute, which provides the world’s most forward-thinking and creative chefs with a place to exchange knowledge, experiment with new ideas, and discover cooking and growing techniques using the canvas of the most flavorful, colorful and nutritious vegetables on the planet.
While there, we learned so much about regenerative farming—what it is, what it means for our future, and why we should care. Farmer Lee and Bob's passion was contagious and we are excited to share it with you.
Their mission, through their beautiful growing techniques, is to deliver the freshest, most nutrient-dense, tasty vegetables directly to your door, and as Farmer Lee says, "Healthy soil makes healthy vegetables, which makes healthy people."
We're proud to support this family farm and hope you will too. Join us for our Mystery Valentines Day Dinner for two complete with fresh produce delivered directly to your door from The Chef's Garden.
Episode and PLANTSTRONG Resources:
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Farmer Lee Jones:
Looking at the soil and understanding what's happening with the soil, if you get the soil in balance and the soil is healthy and you put healthy plants into that, we have a saying, healthy soil, healthy vegetables, healthy people. And that's in its simplest form, but that's really, in a nutshell, what it's really all about.
Rip Esselstyn:
Season three of the Plant Strong podcast explores those Galileo moments where you seek to understand the real truth around your health and dare to see the world through a different lens. This season we honor those courageous seekers who are paving the way for you and me. Grab your telescope, point it towards your future and let's get plant strong together.
Rip Esselstyn:
If you've been following us for a while, you know that I'm a big believer in eating plants, plain and simple. I have never put a huge emphasis on organic versus conventional and I've never recommended that you shop in the fancy stores in order to get your produce. The only thing that I really focus on is urging people to crowd out all the animal products, processed oils, and the junk foods and to really fill up your plates with as many whole, unprocessed plant-based foods as possible.
Rip Esselstyn:
This past Thanksgiving, my mother sent each of her kids the most incredible box of Thanksgiving produce I have ever experienced in my life. No joke. You know that I have dedicated more than 30 plus years to eating plants and I take a lot of joy in discovering quality produce, but this box blew my mind. The leafy greens, the variety of tubers, the beets, the carrots, all the different colors. I've never seen anything like this. And remember, I worked at Whole Foods Market global headquarters for over 10 years so I've seen a lot of quality produce in my day. And in addition, the micro greens in this box, and to be honest, I've never been a huge fan of micro greens, I thought they were just some trendy spa food that could never compete with the heft of some of my go-tos like Swiss Chard, collards, and kale, but these micro greens were over the top amazing on a lot of different levels. And I've learned a lot about micro greens.
Rip Esselstyn:
I just had to find out more about this little farm who sent me this box of vegetables. They are called The Chef's Garden and get this, on their pastoral property is a state-of-the-art chef-led research kitchen called, The Culinary Vegetable Institute. And as it turns out, it's not a little farm. It's in fact one of the world's best kept secrets when it comes to specialty produce and it's just outside Cleveland, Ohio. Who would have thought? It's only because of COVID, as you're going to learn, that they are now becoming known to the rest of us. I flew to the farm last week so I could see this operation first hand and meet the incredible family and team behind these vegetables.
Rip Esselstyn:
Side note here, if you're listening to this podcast, I would encourage you to hop over to YouTube because the footage of this visit will blow your mind. I was able to walk the grow houses and marvel at the rows and rows of purple kale. I learned about their cover crops and what it means to really nurture healthy soil. I tasted dozens of micro greens and fresh herbs and obscure rare vegetables like Jerusalem artichokes and parsnips. I met their lead researcher who is setting the standard for, get this, measuring the levels of nitrates in vegetables to determine what growing conditions impact those nitrates. And as we know, vegetables high in nitrates lead to greater nitrous oxide production which means our endothelial cells are going to sing. And just for you, our audience, they are eagerly exploring this new frontier.
Rip Esselstyn:
As a result of this visit, I am beyond excited to share that we have partnered with The Chef's Garden to create an extra special at-home experience for all of you to enjoy this upcoming Valentine's Day. I want you to have the opportunity, like I did, to taste these best-in-class magical vegetables, all handpicked and shipped straight to your door. We have a select number of boxes that are available for this shared culinary adventure and as podcast listeners, you are the first to know. Sign up for our Plant Strong mystery Valentine's dinner and we promise to surprise and delight you with a special four-course at-home culinary cooking experience.
Rip Esselstyn:
You'll receive a box brimming with the most premium produce from Chef's Garden and paired with just a few items that you already have in your pantry, you're going to learn as I did to prepare and enjoy a special holiday dinner for two. Visit plantstrong.com/garden for more details and to grab your spot in this fun event.
Rip Esselstyn:
Right now I am pleased to introduce you to Farmer Lee Jones and his brother, Bob Jones of The Chef's Garden and the Culinary Vegetable Institute. Join me in learning how the world's finest produce is grown. My bet is you'll fall in love with this family and their legacy just like I did.
Rip Esselstyn:
Patrick, let me try that last paragraph and that way it might be easiest for you.
Rip Esselstyn:
Right now I am pleased to introduce you to Farmer Lee Jones and his brother, Bob Jones of the Chef's Garden and the Culinary Vegetable Institute. Join me in learning how the world's finest produce is grown and my bet is, you're going to fall in love with this family and their legacy just like I did.
Rip Esselstyn:
Hello.
Farmer Lee Jones:
It is an honor to have you on the farm here at the Chef's Garden. After all this time, and here you are. It's really exciting for us.
Rip Esselstyn:
It's just as exciting for me to be here. How do you like to be referred to? Is it, Farmer Lee Jones? Is it Lee Jones?
Farmer Lee Jones:
You can call me anything but late for dinner. Farmer Lee Jones, Lee Jones, Farmer.
Rip Esselstyn:
Okay.
Farmer Lee Jones:
Really, any of it works.
Rip Esselstyn:
The first thing I'd love to ask you is, your outfit. The overalls.
Farmer Lee Jones:
Don't you think that's a little personal for our first date?
Rip Esselstyn:
I like to just dive right in.
Farmer Lee Jones:
I see that.
Rip Esselstyn:
But I'm just thinking, the overalls, the white shirt, the bow tie. Can you tell me a little bit about that look?
Farmer Lee Jones:
It's the only look you're ever going to get. I have 18 pairs of overalls, 17 are in the closet.
Rip Esselstyn:
All Carhartts?
Farmer Lee Jones:
All Carhartts. I do not own another pair of pants. I have 18 pairs of overalls, 18 white shirts, and 18 red bow ties.
Rip Esselstyn:
Steve Jobs did the same thing with his black turtlenecks and the jeans and everything like that. Was he an inspiration for you?
Farmer Lee Jones:
I can tell you that Albert Einstein also wore the same thing every day. Unfortunately, that's where the similarities with Albert and I stop.
Rip Esselstyn:
I don't know if I agree with that.
Farmer Lee Jones:
That's very kind of you. Actually, it really goes back to the history of the farm and our roots. One of the few books i read in high school was John Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath. And of course it talks about the great depression and the dust bowl. It really was a difficult time that Americans and American farmers were really going through. A lot of them were displaced from their family farms and in many cases they loaded everything that they owned onto one old vehicle, sometimes three generations on the vehicle with the pet dog and anything else that they had and they were just looking for a place to start over and looking for work.
Farmer Lee Jones:
There were some large ranches and large corporate operations that really took advantage of the desperation of these people because they were in groves, there were hundreds of thousands of these families just really desperate for, all they wanted to do was earn a living, make an honest living and they had lost their farms and lost their land and they were looking for a place. Ranchers that had large orange or apple groves or peach harvests would post a sign and get the word out and there would be people for miles lined up bumper to bumper to come to these camps. Of course, they would get paid about a dollar a day to harvest. It would be another half a dollar to stay on the camp and another half a dollar to get a hot meal and a shower, so they would pretty much be working for nothing. It was really, they were being taken advantage of.
Farmer Lee Jones:
These farmers, they were really down and out, these families. But despite all of this, the overalls and the white shirts that they wore were clean, but they were worn. There were tears in them and they were worn out.
Rip Esselstyn:
That was the outfit. It was overalls and a white shirt.
Farmer Lee Jones:
They had a square dance on a Saturday night in one of these camps, and you can actually still see in on black and white, the old Grapes of Wrath movie if you don't want to read the book, but there's a scene on a Saturday night and they have a square dance, worn and torn but clean and bow ties, white shirts and overalls. And despite it all, they maintained their dignity and their integrity and their pride. For every small family farmer out there, every farmer, everybody that's ever wanted to be a farmer, it's really representing the little guys. And being able to follow our dream and our passion of being able to stay on the farm. I know that there's times when people see it and I'll even get a woot woot. They think maybe it's an engineer. I get some jokes.
Farmer Lee Jones:
I've been to black tie affairs in New York City where the guys are in tuxedos and bow ties and women in evening gowns and a guy will come over and say, "Gosh, you sure look comfortable in those. I wish I could get away with that." But yeah, when I was a kid we were embarrassed of the vehicles my parents drove and if we were late for school, we would ask them to drove us off a block before school because we were embarrassed of the cars that my parents drove. But now, if it was a new tractor, a new piece of equipment on the farm, we had it. But my dad always thought a car was a bad investment. I was embarrassed. But at this point, I'm proud of who I am and what we represent.
Farmer Lee Jones:
There's an old saying on the farm that you can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear. Have you ever heard that before?
Rip Esselstyn:
Never. Never.
Farmer Lee Jones:
I'm just never going to clean up and look as handsome as you in that nice looking suit so I might as well go as a farmer.
Rip Esselstyn:
And you are and you've been doing that really, really well. Tell me a little bit about the history of this farm and your father and what he instilled in you guys.
Farmer Lee Jones:
You have to go to the region. This is an amazing micro climate. It's some of the richest, sandy loam in the world. We're 2.9 miles inland from Lake Erie and Lake Erie is the shallowest of all the Great Lakes. Consequently, it's the warmest. In fact, this area was huge in grapes before even Napa Valley. It was huge wine grape production. But European settlers recognized this as a great growing area and they came in. And if you think about having this amazing micro climate with some of the richest, sandy loam in the world and then the proximity of Cleveland an hour away, Columbus two hours away, Toledo an hour away. Detroit an hour and a half, Pittsburgh three and a half. Cincinnati four hours away. You've got this amazing micro climate with as near as we can figure, the largest concentration of vegetable growers of any county in the world.
Farmer Lee Jones:
You can say, wait a minute, California, you've got from the north to the south, to the east to the west, it's 100% agriculture. But it's also owned by 100 growers and each have 30,000 acres. These were what today we would call an artisan grower, they were small, what they call truck farms. They would grow their vegetables and they would harvest those and they would take them into farmers markets, which are entirely different farmers markets than what we know of today where we go at 8:00 in the morning or 7:00 if we're ambitious on a Saturday morning or a Wednesday. These were farmers markets where you went in and you met the grocery store buyers because there were just as many grocery stores as you could imagine back in the day.
Farmer Lee Jones:
Go back to your hometown. Think of the family owned grocery stores that existed back when you and I were kids. They don't exist anymore. It's really the Walmart syndrome 50 years earlier. They would go in and each one of those family owned grocery stores would have their own buyer and so the farmers would take their product in and those buyers would buy for those individual grocery stores. Unfortunately, a lot of things took place to make that happen, but we've kind of lost our way and lost the connection with where food comes from. But it's really an amazing micro climate. My dad, with 330 vegetable growers here, went to work for one of the most progressive growers, and his name was Charles Nichols.
Rip Esselstyn:
Do you know when that was?
Farmer Lee Jones:
That would have been in the mid-50s. Dad was 14 years old at the time. Mr. Nichols recognized the change. Do you remember the Atlantic Pacific Tea Company, A&P?
Rip Esselstyn:
Sure, absolutely. Yep, yep.
Farmer Lee Jones:
Kroger, Big Bear, Pick and Pay, places like that. Mr. Nichols recognized the need to be able to take what these small growers were doing and bring it together and he invested in cooling, packing, palletization, hydro cooling. They worked cooperatively together and were able to compete with places that could do it on a larger scale and bigger volumes and warmer climates like Arizona, Florida, Georgia, California, Mexico. Dad actually took that farm over, ramped up like 15 to 20 years. Mr. Nichols had no children that wanted to take over the farm and my dad bought the farm from him. One by one, those small family farms were continuing to go out of business. My dad continued to expand his acreage and by the time I was 15 or 16 years old, we were farming about 1200 acres of fresh market vegetables.
Farmer Lee Jones:
You have to really kind of think about the way that they farmed. We were farming commercially. We were farming chemically. If you follow the money, the universities are all financially in trouble and so they are looking for money. Who is making the money? Pharmaceutical companies and the chemical companies. They give the grants to the universities and say hey, we'd like to give you a $20 million check to do research to help the farmers. Of course, there were a few strings attached along the way. We want you to do research to help the farmers, but it also needs to use these chemicals to be able to grow.
Farmer Lee Jones:
Of course, that disconnect continued to happen more and more. And we farmed that way, late 70s, early 80s. I don't know whether you remember, but interest rates hit 21%.
Rip Esselstyn:
Let me back up for a minute.
Farmer Lee Jones:
Sure.
Rip Esselstyn:
When you say that we farmed that way. You mean, you were using those chemicals and stuff like that?
Farmer Lee Jones:
We were. That was the way the university was teaching.
Rip Esselstyn:
Okay.
Farmer Lee Jones:
Here's how you increase your yields. Here's how you manage weeds and pests is through chemical usage to control those.
Rip Esselstyn:
Phosphates and stuff like that?
Farmer Lee Jones:
That's right. That's right. It was a way to be able to expand volume and production. You look at the competitive nature, a lot of things in the United States, we couldn't compete on on a global marketplace, but the one thing we could was in agriculture. We could compete on a global marketplace. The reality is that we produce food in America cheaper than any other country in the world as it relates to our income. The other side of that is, is that we also have the highest healthcare in the world.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah. Isn't that ironic?
Farmer Lee Jones:
Isn't that ironic?
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah.
Farmer Lee Jones:
Eventually interest rates hit 21%, we had an amazingly devastating hail storm that completely, totally wiped out all the crops. When I was 19 years old, I stood shoulder to shoulder with my mom and dad and brother and sister, all of our neighbors, all of our competitors, everybody that was there to celebrate our failure and they auctioned every single thing that we owned off, right down to my mother's car and our house. We crawled away.
Rip Esselstyn:
Where did you crawl to?
Farmer Lee Jones:
Down the road. Six acres and started over. As rough as that was, it gave us an opportunity to rethink what we were doing. My dad really started looking back at agricultural books. 100 years ago even, 125 years ago and thinking about looking at the way that they were farming. Pre-chemical, pre-synthetic fertilizers, rotating, rebuilding soil naturally through cover crops. Rather than using, the chemicals weren't even invented at that point and it was building that soil up and creating a healthy plant so it would defend against the insect or the disease in the first place.
Farmer Lee Jones:
It really started us down a journey in the early 80s looking at growing in a way that resonated maybe more with dad than with us because what he was reading about, what we started researching was, it had existed, it's just that we had lost something in a generation and we had abandoned those principles. In many ways, when you come to our farm, you'll see technology that is very advanced but yet you'll also see part of the farm going back and one of our goals is to knit as good as our grandparents were. My dad has a saying that the only thing we're trying to do is get as good as the farmers were 100 years ago. We're still trying to do that.
Rip Esselstyn:
It's a marriage really-
Farmer Lee Jones:
It really is.
Rip Esselstyn:
Of new technology and we'll be talking about that with your brother-
Farmer Lee Jones:
Yes.
Rip Esselstyn:
Here in a little bit. And then going back to the old farm practices before maybe using the wonderful diversity that's there just in nature.
Farmer Lee Jones:
That's right.
Rip Esselstyn:
You guys crawled back, you started over. Where are you today?
Farmer Lee Jones:
It's certainly not a rags to riches story. And that's not at all what I'm trying to create or to present to you. It gave us an opportunity through a devastation or through literally a life-changing time and place. It allowed us to redirect and to refocus. It allowed us to look at that plant and think about it in a more holistic approach to really farming the right way. In a lot of ways there is so many synergies and symbiotic relationships between your messaging and what we're trying to do and that's part of the reason why we're just so excited to form a relationship with you folks.
Farmer Lee Jones:
Looking at the soil and understanding what's happening with the soil, if you get the soil in balance and the soil is healthy, and you put healthy plants into that, we have a saying, healthy soil, healthy vegetables, healthy people. And that's in its simplest form, but that's really in a nutshell, what it's really all about.
Rip Esselstyn:
You guys picked yourselves up, you got back in there. Who were some of your first customers and how did you build the business up?
Farmer Lee Jones:
We started back at farmers markets because it was the only place that we knew to start over. But at that farmers market we met a woman, her name was Iris Ballen, she was a chef. She had trained over in Europe with some of the best over in Europe. We didn't know anything about chefs and she came to the farmers market and I met her. She had a white coat on. We had no clue about the chef world. She said, "I'm looking for product with flavor. I'm looking for product grown without chemical. I'm looking for a product grown the right way." She said, "I believe that if you would go down that path, there would be enough chefs that would support you."
Farmer Lee Jones:
We were desperate for a way to be able to survive in agriculture. We latched onto her and we wouldn't let go. We realized that she was a whole lot smarter than we were. We finally, come winter time, when we got through that season, we said, "Look, can we come in and sit down and talk with you?" She was actually a chef for a brokerage firm in downtown Cleveland. We loaded in a pickup truck, Bob and my dad and I, and we drove down there and we got there. Of course, the brokerage firm was closed on Saturday. There was this big, huge, long legal table, if you will, it was a fancy, fancy place. She had that table covered. I bet you there was 50 books opened to different, with ear marks on them. She was so excited that she had found somebody that was willing to listen to what she was saying.
Farmer Lee Jones:
She wanted products grown that she had experienced in Europe and she wanted them grown here. Flavor was the most important thing to her and growing them without the chemical, doing it the right way. She introduced us to another chef and then another chef. It really started in the Cleveland area proper. But then we read about a famous chef coming from France, Jean-Louis Palladin. He came to the Watergate Hotel in DC. There was a lot of news and a lot of story lines written about him and we reached out to him. He was pretty gregarious. He was outspoken and he was not at all bashful.
Rip Esselstyn:
As gregarious as you?
Farmer Lee Jones:
I couldn't hold a candle to him. His message was, "If you want to grow for me, you must figure out the right way to grow. The food in America is shit." That's pretty gregarious, right?
Rip Esselstyn:
Yes. Yes.
Farmer Lee Jones:
A lot of people are like, who the heck is this guy coming into the USA telling us that our stuff is not any good because at that point, if you look at what was happening in American agriculture, we're growing so much volume of food, we're competing on a global marketplace producing millions and millions of tons of product and it was driving the economic engine in the United States. And here's this guy coming in from France telling us that our food isn't any good. Had we been smart enough to listen to him, as a country, and the United States back in the 70s, maybe we could have saved some of this mess that we find ourselves in today.
Rip Esselstyn:
Right. Then that led to more chefs and more chefs and more chefs. How did it get to be that the Chef's Garden was doing, I'll just throw out a number, 75% of your business to restaurants?
Farmer Lee Jones:
Oh my gosh. It was 100%. We moved to this restaurant world and it became 100% of our world for the last 35 years. We've been very, very, very fortunate to get to work with Michelin-starred restaurants, Ritz Carltons, Four Seasons, St. Regis, Mandarin Orientals, Disney. Just the best of the best. And we've just been so honored to be able to be a small part of some really amazing teams over the last 35 years. Unfortunately-
Rip Esselstyn:
You've been working with them for 35 years?
Farmer Lee Jones:
35 years.
Rip Esselstyn:
Wow. Okay. I'm sorry, what happened?
Farmer Lee Jones:
Unfortunately we had this thing called COVID.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yep. Part of it.
Farmer Lee Jones:
Kind of crept up on all of us. Needless to say, the restaurant world has taken a little bit of a-
Rip Esselstyn:
Breather?
Farmer Lee Jones:
A little bit of a hit. They will return. They will recover. We are survivors here, all of us in this country. We figure out a way to get things done. But it's a difficult time for the restaurants and the restaurant servers and the restaurant owners and all of those folks. And there's a ripple down effect and it's really had a devastating effect on the farm. We had had a notion of being able to get our product to the end users. We've had those requests but we just frankly hadn't had the time to be able to devote to it. Needless to say, we had a little time available.
Rip Esselstyn:
So now you do.
Farmer Lee Jones:
We opened it up to individuals and we ship from our farm direct to individuals all over the country and we kind of pivoted in a hurry.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yep. I know that I got a big box for Christmas.
Farmer Lee Jones:
Right. Yeah.
Rip Esselstyn:
Actually two big boxes. It was the most extraordinary produce I have ever experienced and tasted in my life. You guys do some really phenomenal things here that I'd like to know how is it that ... How many varieties of kale are we looking at here, for example?
Farmer Lee Jones:
We're looking at about six different varieties. There's so many different ways that we could answer that question. Color is health. We know, eat the rainbow. But the more varieties within, we know that kale is something that's really, really good for us. You take it several steps further in how it's grown, but taking it back to that soil, fundamentally how do we take care of the soil to be able to grow the kale. Having the variety and diversity of kale and then picking those in different sizes offers a lot of different ways to be able to use it.
Farmer Lee Jones:
We tend to think one dimensionally about kale. If we go back to my grandmother, you got kale and you boiled it down for a half a day. This kale, it doesn't even need to be cooked especially if you can pick these nice, young, inner tender leaves and create a mescaline with kales. You can eat a kale salad. Any time we can consume this stuff without cooking it, we know that we hold more of the nutrients.
Rip Esselstyn:
Maybe you could create a little kale mescaline salad for me.
Farmer Lee Jones:
I would love that. Let's do that. I think we should create it together.
Rip Esselstyn:
Let's do that.
Farmer Lee Jones:
Let's do it.
Rip Esselstyn:
Perfect. How many different varieties of sweet potatoes do you make here?
Farmer Lee Jones:
You know, I don't have enough fingers to count that.
Rip Esselstyn:
I think I heard-
Farmer Lee Jones:
Well, we work with Cornell University. Cornell has done some phenomenal work. The varieties of food that we're seeing in grocery stores, and I'm generalizing, are varieties that had disease resistance, they had the ability to ship 3000 miles and they yielded off the charts. None of these varieties of sweet potatoes that we're talking about are going to yield like the varieties you're going to find in the store. But I would defy you to find a sweet potato that tastes anywhere near as good as these. Cornell is trying to revive or to keep some of these varieties from going into complete, what would be the right word, going into complete-
Rip Esselstyn:
Extinction.
Farmer Lee Jones:
Extinction. Yeah. We've done some work with, I think at one point we did trials on over 100 varieties. We pared it down to about 10 or 12 now. But our chef, actually, at Culinary Vegetable Institute has served on several occasions the sweet potatoes as a dessert. They are just that good.
Rip Esselstyn:
It's like a crème brulee.
Farmer Lee Jones:
We have a variety called crème brulee. Yes.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yes. I get excited about that. Tell me this, how many team members do you have here on the Chef's farm? I know it's seasonal as well, but-
Farmer Lee Jones:
I think there is about 100 full time folks. It's one of the many reasons that makes the Chef's Garden so special because there is a lot of diversity and diversity and ideas and thoughts and experiences. We counted up here not too long ago and there was 1000 years of Chef's Garden experience here on the farm. We have a world exchange program where folks come in from different countries, usually in agricultural programs in their respective countries and come here. We just had a young man head back to Tanzania yesterday and had been here for a year. [Kemo 00:30:41], we really hated to see him go. But Russia, Hungary, Moldova, Ukraine, Georgia, Brazil, Mexico. Really, team members is an accurate thing, but they are really extended family members and they add so much depth and they are a huge part of helping the farm grow, no pun intended. It's been one of the real blessings and joys to meet so many folks and bring so many ideas here and take many ideas back to their home countries.
Farmer Lee Jones:
Really, it's just a very special place.
Rip Esselstyn:
There's a lot of things that I think that are special about this place. And this is my first time.
Farmer Lee Jones:
I hope it's the first of many, Rip.
Rip Esselstyn:
I do too. I think, as you just alluded to, one of your special sauces is the diversity of your team members.
Farmer Lee Jones:
Absolutely.
Rip Esselstyn:
And taking a tour of your grounds and meeting some of your team members, they are so passionate and they love the work here and what they are doing and I think the mission that your father started how ever many years ago, it's really phenomenal.
Rip Esselstyn:
You guys are making farming cool. You are making it cool and hip and pretty and tasty and nutritional oomph.
Farmer Lee Jones:
We're working at it and we think we've got a long ways to go. We're on a good path and one of the blessings has been the team members here, but some of the amazing folks that we've gotten to meet along the way. I just think that this is, in the history of the farm, this is a special occasion to have you folks here, Rip, and I just think the symbiotic relationship that's going to occur from us working together and lots of exciting things on the horizon. We had Ferran Adria here, and at the time that he was here, Charlie Trotter brought him in and Ferran Adria, at the time-
Rip Esselstyn:
Is that a chef?
Farmer Lee Jones:
That's a chef. He was the number one chef in the world at the time.
Rip Esselstyn:
Say the name again.
Farmer Lee Jones:
Ferran Adria.
Rip Esselstyn:
Where's he from?
Farmer Lee Jones:
elBulli in Madrid.
Rip Esselstyn:
Okay.
Farmer Lee Jones:
He was the number one chef in the world when he was here and he said, "We've explored every species of fish, of poultry, of pork, of beef that exists. We've explored every one of them, but there are literally thousands of plants to explore." And he said, it's the future and that's what so exciting about it, is we are a plant-based plant forward future. It's inevitable for sustainability, for regenerative farming, for the future of society. And we're on the cusp of really making, seeing some significant changes in the way that we think about our food.
Rip Esselstyn:
I think what people are starting to realize more and more is that food is medicine and the most powerful form of that medicine comes from plants.
Farmer Lee Jones:
That's right.
Rip Esselstyn:
It doesn't come from animal products or animal by-products. We want to go to the mother source where it all is created, and that's from plants. You guys are doing things with plants that, this is like a dream world. It's like walking into a dream world.
Farmer Lee Jones:
Every day. Every day.
Rip Esselstyn:
And I wish that everybody could step into this world here and experience it because it gives you such an appreciation for the time and love and the science that's gone into this. It's allowed to be where you are now, since your father, I think you said, in the 1950 something, bought the farm from, who was it, Norton?
Farmer Lee Jones:
Charlie Nichols.
Rip Esselstyn:
Charlie Nichols.
Farmer Lee Jones:
Charlie Nichols.
Rip Esselstyn:
Charlie Nichols.
Rip Esselstyn:
I hope that you're enjoying getting to know the Jones family at the Chef's Garden. If you'd like to participate in our Valentine's Day mystery dinner for two, visit plantstrong.com/garden to register today. This premium culinary experience is meant to be shared with someone you care a whole lot about. And to make sure that you all nail it, and I mean nail this dinner, we've got step by step beautifully filmed instructions followed by a live Q&A with the amazing chef, Jamie Simpson. You're going to learn techniques and methods you've never seen before that you'll be able to use on a daily basis going forward.
Rip Esselstyn:
I learned about half a dozen cooking maneuvers during the filming of this event that I absolutely love, love, love. Register today and you'll receive your box just ahead of Valentine's Day. Then we'll release the film on Saturday, February 13th, and answer your questions so you have time to watch and then prepare this plant incredible meal. Visit plantstrong.com/garden today for all the details.
Rip Esselstyn:
Bob, met your brother just a little bit earlier. Tell me, is he your older brother?
Bob Jones:
Yes, by about three and a half years.
Rip Esselstyn:
Okay. Were you guys close growing up?
Bob Jones:
Yeah. I would say so because we grew up working on the farm together. We spent a lot of time together working on the farm with each other. We spent a lot of time working with my grandfather on the farm. My dad was running the wholesale produce operation at that time. We didn't see a whole lot of him during the day. He worked 14, 15 hours a day. We saw him on Sunday morning at church.
Rip Esselstyn:
This is your father?
Bob Jones:
Yes.
Rip Esselstyn:
wow.
Bob Jones:
Yeah. We would go out to dinner after church and have a family meal and then he'd go back to work. We'd play. And then Monday, we'd start over. But I wouldn't change anything now. It's life on the farm.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah. What does this farm mean to you?
Bob Jones:
Oh my goodness. It's a great question. It certainly is, it really is a family business and when I say family, there is immediate family and then there are, you've met some of the folks in your couple of days here, that have been with us 10, 15, 20, 25 years. We have second generation and coming third generation families working with us on the farm. Growing vegetables is all we know how to do. It's all we've ever done. What we really probably weren't totally aware of was that this is a just a way to help people. I heard a speaker talk one time about giving financial advice to business owners who wanted to do ministry work, they wanted to retire early and go do ministry work, mission work. And something he said really resonated with me and that is that owning a family business, there is no greater mission field. You have people working with you every day that are experiencing life and they expect to be mentored and helped along the way.
Bob Jones:
This really, when you know second and third generation families that you've been working with, even in customers, there are customers we have known for 30 years. We know their kids, we know their grandkids. And it's all about relationships. People ask me all the time, what is the Chef's Garden. It's the diversity of the plant species that we grow. It's the uniqueness and how we do agriculture and regenerative agriculture.
Rip Esselstyn:
I'd love to ask you about that.
Bob Jones:
And it's relationships and those relationships are internal amongst our team, external with customers and even with vendors. We want to develop win-win relationships at every level of relationship in the business and those are the relationships that last. And that's really what makes this farm special.
Rip Esselstyn:
The second point you talked about there was regenerative agriculture.
Bob Jones:
Sure.
Rip Esselstyn:
Can you explain to our listen, what exactly is that and why have you guys embraced it?
Bob Jones:
Sure. Very interesting background story. A lot of this ties back to my father, or our father. My dad sent me to a soils course taught by a veterinarian in Minneapolis in December about 17, 20 years ago now. Now, there's a lot of things wrong with that. Nobody goes to Minneapolis in December on purpose. But it was a three day soils course taught by a veterinarian. His name was Dr. Dan Skou and he studied under a soil scientist by the name of Carey Reams. Their concept was that, Carey Reams was actually jailed three times for practicing medicine without a license and all he was doing was measuring the pH and electrical conductivity of blood and urine and then telling people what they should eat less of and what they should eat more. They felt better by following his directives.
Bob Jones:
Consequently, he was obviously practicing medicine without a license. It really was, back then, that was in the late 60s, early 70s, where food as medicine was really fringe. It was just really looked down upon by the medical community. We've come a long, long way. We have a very similar relationship in the agricultural community where the university specialists have looked down on regenerative farmers, ecological farmers, organic farmers, who want to better understand natural processes and leverage those natural processes to help plants become more healthy and then to become more nutrient dense and everything evolves in the positive direction. To a point now where those same university researchers are asking to come out and do research on our farm, which is, we welcome them with open arms because we'd like to have the university researchers, scientists evaluate what we've been seeing anecdotally for 20 years now.
Bob Jones:
We know it works and yields wonderful results. We want them to understand that so more folks can utilize these principles. This is not something we want to keep a secret. Healthy soils producing healthy plants producing healthy people and a healthy environment is something that we all want desperately. We've gone the wrong [crosstalk 00:42:15]. We can't survive without it. Can't survive without it.
Rip Esselstyn:
With the regenerative agriculture, I would love it if you could explain a little bit more about the cover crops, the rotation. Is it organic, is it conventional or is it nothing to do with either one of those?
Bob Jones:
It really is not necessarily tied to the labeling on the box. There are some purist organic farmers who understand regenerative farming much better than I do. I've learned from them. We've learned from each other. The organic label is about, if you read the National Organic program of the USDA, it's a list of dos and don'ts. Here are things that you can do and things that you can't do. And you can put this organic label on the box that you are selling. What we have heard consumers ask for repeatedly for several years now is fresh produce that looks good, tastes good, is good for me and is clean. There's nothing in it that will hurt me or my family. There's nothing in the National Organic program that talks about the results of the system. It's all a systems-based approach.
Bob Jones:
You can do this. You can't do this. You can use this. You can't use this. There are some agricultural amendments that are forbidden by the organic standards that we in fact use. There are some organic amendments that are allowed that I would never use because they are full of heavy metals which transfer right into the plant and there's a lot of research now on heavy metals and Alzheimer's and several other health maladies relating to that. It doesn't sound like a great idea to me. Does the food look good, taste good, and is it clean. We test our food for microbiological contamination and food safety. We also test for residue. If I'm going to use a specific chemistry, I'm going to test for that to make sure it doesn't end up in the plant. We use very, very little at a very low rate.
Bob Jones:
It's more about the results of the process and the resulting quality of the food. There's nothing in the organic program that talks about food quality. That's disappointing to us. And we've been at this for a long time. We've learned a lot along the way from a lot of people. We're still learning every single day. Never say never. But I can find just as many studies that say conventionally produced produce is better for you than organic as I can organic studies that say it's better for you than conventional. We tend not to get hung up on that argument and look at the results of our process so that we're growing clean food that tastes good and is dense from a nutrient standpoint.
Rip Esselstyn:
We were talking earlier today about the latest thing that you guys are more excited about than anything, that you've discovered just in the last month.
Bob Jones:
Sure.
Rip Esselstyn:
What is that?
Bob Jones:
You turned us on to this actually and that is the nitrate nitrogen content in the leafy greens. From an agricultural standpoint, we were always taught at the university level that having too high a nitrate/nitrogen level in fresh greens was a very bad thing, that it diluted the plant sap and became an attractant to insects, that you would get an influx of aphids, for example. Nobody wants aphids in their food. What we've seen through our research now is that we can drive that number up higher, we didn't understand the importance of it and the body's ability to convert nitrate/nitrogen to nitrate oxide and the resulting benefit to humans from that.
Bob Jones:
You guys turned us on to that and then we really jumped wholeheartedly into that to try and figure out how do we manage that in the plant to give you what you're looking for. Your father's research is literally groundbreaking and the similarities are quite striking to us in that as ostracized and looked down upon as we were in the agricultural community for doing the things we did, your dad experienced the exact same thing. We have that in common. I think both of our fathers were well ahead of their time and I long for the day that people sit back and shake their head and say, those are two pretty smart guys. They were really ahead of their time. I think both of them would be very happy to know that we have found each other and we're helping each other and we're learning from each other because both of them were such proponents of education.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah. Yeah.
Bob Jones:
We're really excited about it. We're really excited to learn new things because at the end of the day, when your life's work can help people, what more do you want.
Rip Esselstyn:
What were some of the ways that you have learned with the green leafies in particular to get the maximum amount of nitrates-
Bob Jones:
Sure.
Rip Esselstyn:
Is it to consume them raw, cooked? What have you discovered?
Bob Jones:
What our early research is showing, certainly there are varietal differences, there are seasonality differences. The nitrate/nitrogen uptake into leafy greens is determined by temperature, humidity, c02, and light level. And so obviously, you can understand the temperature and light differentiation between seasons, but also on indoor growing in greenhouses where we can better manage ... Greenhouse growing is called, controlled environment agriculture because you have the ability to control the environment to a better degree than you can outdoors.
Rip Esselstyn:
Can I stop you for a second? How many acres of controlled agriculture do you have here?
Bob Jones:
In our operation, we have about 400 acres of outdoor production, only about a fourth of that in vegetables in any one year. The balance in multi species cover crops for sheet composting and soil building, about 15 acres of covered production of some form or fashion that allows us to produce in this climate on a year round basis. Our customer base asked for our quality of product 12 months of the year. The nitrate/nitrogen then understanding the physical mechanical uptake of that being affected by light, temperature, humidity, we are learning how to pick the varieties that have the highest rates of nitrate/nitrogen, how we encourage that uptake into the plant, and what we've learned is that eating a particular part of plant, the petiole of the plant, the young growing shoot of the plant has the highest percentage of nitrates in them, and uncooked is best.
Bob Jones:
Cooking, on average, from all of the tests that we've undertaken so far show that boiling for five to six minutes actually reduces that nitrate content by 70 to 80%.
Rip Esselstyn:
Wow.
Bob Jones:
So young tender plants that don't need to be cooked. If you think about what we've used for a long time, it's older, more mature plants and you have to cook it to make it palatable and to make it edible. With these young tender shoots of plants, pick the absolute part of the plant that has the highest concentration of the nitrates, and consume it as soon after harvest as possible without cooking tends to yield the greatest results.
Rip Esselstyn:
Typically, how long can you get it to a customer's doorstep after being picked?
Bob Jones:
As a general rule, 24 to 48 hours. We're going to harvest to order, wash it, pack it, ship it. And depending on the shipping method chosen and where in the country the product is going, it can be on the doorstep of the kitchen in 24 to 48 hours.
Rip Esselstyn:
Do you think there is any way we could potentially come up with a box of these young green leafies for maximum nitrate consumption for some of our customers?
Bob Jones:
We would love nothing more than to be able to do that, to put lettuces with greens and kales and spinaches and some of our micro greens. The specific varieties, the super food blend with the watercress and the kales, the chives that tend to test the highest to make a box that would be good for somebody, for two people for a week. And you get a new box every week of these fresh greens so you're always eating the youngest, most tender without having to cook, it comes on a weekly basis, it comes right to the door.
Rip Esselstyn:
Plus bio-available?
Bob Jones:
The bio-availability of these young, tender plants, depending on what research you're reading are between 10 to 40% times higher than their full size counterparts. Micro broccoli versus full size broccoli. What that means is that you have to consume less of it to get the same or higher health value out of it. Instead of eating a bushel of broccoli, you can eat four ounces of micro broccoli.
Rip Esselstyn:
How do you know so much about this?
Bob Jones:
A lot of reading. A lot of trial and error research. One of my dad's favorite sayings is, we're not really that smart, but we learn from our mistakes. We just make mistakes at a faster rate than most people.
Rip Esselstyn:
Right. Right.
Bob Jones:
And that's how you learn.
Rip Esselstyn:
And you've got a team of scientists.
Bob Jones:
A wonderful team of folks that we've assimilated here and we have an on-farm lab where we're testing for nutrient density. We're testing for nitrate density. We're testing for antioxidants. We're testing light levels. We're trying to figure out, we've been working with restaurant chefs for over 30 years, and these restaurant chefs have told us over and over again, we love the product that you're sending to us. It tastes better, it lasts longer than anything else we can buy in the marketplace. Very anecdotal information and so dad decided 15 years ago, we've got to figure out what the mechanism is that's causing this. They told us over and over that their top requirements, these chefs requirements were flavor, shelf life, flavor, aesthetics, and more flavor.
Rip Esselstyn:
Flavor on the top side.
Bob Jones:
That's right. 60% of their requirement was flavor because that's what sells in the restaurant. It's the experience and it's the flavor. And so we set about trying to figure out what were the causation effects of causing flavor. It was genetics and it was cultural practices. Biological activity in the soil, healthy soil, cover crop rotation, fallow, and then put good varieties in that soil, you got better color and better flavor and better shelf life. What we didn't know, for the last 15 years, that there was a direct correlation to flavor and shelf life with nutrition and color. We had no idea. We didn't know what we didn't know. And now we're starting to learn that. We're learning every day. We're excited by our results. We're way out over our skis. We know that, but we're learning every day and we're getting better and better at this.
Bob Jones:
We've had relationships with a lot of really good folks over the years who we've learned from that have helped us along the way.
Rip Esselstyn:
How exciting. You're not only producing the most beautiful produce, really, on the planet. It's also got great shelf life. You've also got this nutritional integrity that is almost second to none. And then a taste that's out of sight. That seems, I don't what I just said there-
Bob Jones:
The four new ones?
Rip Esselstyn:
You guys have really done something truly unique here.
Bob Jones:
Well, I appreciate that. We're still learning every day. What we're trying to do is leverage natural processes. We're very fortunate in that we get to experience our faith every day because we're learning about creation and we're learning how little we know and it's a wonderful experience to figure that out along the way and know that we have the ability to help people along the way. That just makes it all the sweeter.
Rip Esselstyn:
Thanks for spending time with us as we got to know our friends at the Chef's Garden. Something tells me we'll be creating opportunities to collaborate with them and inviting you to join in along the way. I love that we found so much synergy during our time together and I hope, with our help, the Chef's Garden will find a whole new flock of fans who appreciate all the time and effort and passion they have put into their farm.
Rip Esselstyn:
And speaking of direct to your door convenience, be sure to visit plantstrongfoods.com to check out our current selection of breakfast cereals, granolas, and Plant Strong pizza crust kits available for home delivery. We have some brand new products coming very soon and I can't wait for you to try them.
Rip Esselstyn:
Thank you for listening to the Plant Strong podcast. You can support the show by taking a quick minute to subscribe, rate, and review at Apple podcast, Spotify, Amazon Music, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Sharing the show with your network is another great way to help us reach as many people as possible with the great news about plants. Thank you in advance for your support. It means everything to me. Have you had your own Galileo moment that you'd like to share? What happened when you stepped into the arena and shed the beliefs that you thought to be true. I'd love to hear about it. Visit plantstrongpodcast.com to submit your story and to learn more about today's guests and sponsors.
Rip Esselstyn:
The Plant Strong podcast team includes Carrie Barrett, Laurie Kortowich, Ami Mackey, Patrick Gavin, and Wade Clark. This season is dedicated to all of those courageous truth seekers who weren't afraid to look through the lens with clear vision and hold firm to a higher truth. Most notably, my parents, Dr. Caldwell B. Esselstyn, Jr., Ann Crile Esselstyn. Thanks for listening.
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